I found the fox! Things were looking grim. I had a meeting I HAD to go to
and, of course it ran late. Then there was some obilgatory socialzing
afterward... I basically FLEW home and turned on the rig at about 10:20 to
find 40 nearly empty :-(.

There were a couple of weak packeteers above 7045 and a fluttery hispanic SSb
station drifting thru 7043 or so. Then all of a sudden, a good readable
signal popped out of the noise! Called and no luck. Tried again several times
after his other contacts and still no reply. But, I noticed that he was not
working guys exactly on his freq (of course I didn't know that until he
finally worked a couple of guys I could hear.) I wnet a little off freq and
tried again and BINGO!

Solid 569 both ways and he says "I think I've heard that call before!"
Thanks, Dave, you made my day.

Observation: I noted in my fox report that there seems to be a "hole" out to
250 miles or so where I hear nothing (and they don't hear me). Propagation
seeded the same way last nite.

BTW, about my fox report: I'm not advocating that anyone skip the novice
segment. But I think that perhaps foxes might want to arrange their schedules
to minumize frequency hopping. Maybe do the novice bit first or something. And
(here come the flames) if it seems deserted, limit the time you spend at 7.11
and go to 7.04 to perhaps 15 or 20 minutes. Nobody likes beating his head
against a brick wall!